It is known that in many industries material separation or particle sizing is accomplished by using various types of screens. More particularly, heavy industries which deal with the production of coal, stone, gravel, iron ore, potash, copper, etc., use screens of various sizes and configurations to separate unwanted materials or to merely produce particles having a uniform maximum or minimum size.
Screens which have been employed in the prior art were generally formed with a plurality of rows of stainless steel rods. While these rods were fairly lightweight, and easy to produce, their abrasion resistance to hard materials such as coal, stone, or gravel is low. More specifically, in industries where a constant shower of heavy hard particles was funneled through screens formed from stainless steel rods, the rods would gradually wear away thereby enlarging the spacing between the rods. In addition, as particles build up on the screen they are periodically scraped away with, for example, a wire brush which resulted in the further erosion of the stainless steel rods. Once the spacing between the rods increased beyond a defined limit, the screen had to be discarded, since the screen would fail to produce particles within the required tolerances. Screens employed for industrial uses tend to be very large, and therefore, maintenance time to replace a screen deck is substantial. In addition, of course, new stainless steel rods must be refabricated thereby increasing overall manufacturing costs.
Therefore, it is an object of the subject invention to provide an industrial screen with improved abrasion resistance.
It is another object of the subject invention to provide an industrial screen wherein the distances between the members will remain constant over a longer period of time.
It is still a further object of the subject invention to provide an industrial screen which can be maintained at reduced costs.